Refactoring modules: Error: Provider configuration not present

Question

I'm refactoring some Terraform modules and am getting:

Error: Provider configuration not present

To work with
module.my_module.some_resource.resource_name its
original provider configuration at
module.my_module.provider.some_provider.provider_name is required, but it
has been removed. This occurs when a provider configuration is removed while
objects created by that provider still exist in the state. Re-add the provider
configuration to destroy
module.my_module.some_resource.resource_name, after
which you can remove the provider configuration again.

It seems like I need to remove that resource from the tfstate file then re-add it with the new tf config.

As I'm refactoring some monolithic code there are hundreds of these Error: Provider configuration not present messages.

Any shortcut to removing and re-adding?

if you don't need to handle the existence of the resource you can modify the state directly with: terraform state rm module.my_module.some_resource.resource_name — Ikar Pohorský
– Ikar Pohorský, Commented Jul 1, 2020 at 6:23
This HashiCorp troubleshooting article gives two scenarios and their solutions. support.hashicorp.com/hc/en-us/articles/… — Dayong
– Dayong, Commented May 1, 2022 at 3:38

Henridv · Accepted Answer · 2021-05-05 13:10:40Z

100

As the error message explains, Terraform has detected that there are resource objects still present in the state whose provider configurations are not available, and so it doesn't have enough information to destroy those resources.

In this particular case, that seems to be occurring because there is a provider configuration block in one of your child modules. While that is permitted for compatibility with older versions of Terraform, it's recommended to only have provider blocks in your root module so that they can always outlive any resource instances that the provider is managing.

If your intent is to destroy the resource instances in module.my_module then you must do that before removing the module "my_module" block from the root module. This is one unusual situation where we can use -target to help Terraform understand what we want it to do:

terraform destroy -target=module.my_module

Once all of those objects are destroyed, you should then be able to remove the module "my_module" block without seeing the "Provider configuration not present" error, because there will be no resource instances in the state relying on that provider configuration.

If your goal is to move resource blocks into another module, the other possible resolution here is to use terraform state mv to instruct Terraform to track the existing object under a new address:

terraform state mv 'module.my_module.some_resource.resource_name' 'module.other_module.some_resource.resource_name'

Again, it's better to do this before removing the old module, so that the old provider configuration remains present until there's nothing left for it to manage. After you've moved the existing object into a new module in the state and have a resource block in place for it in the configuration, Terraform should understand your intent to manage this resource with a different provider configuration from now on and you can safely remove the old module block, and thus the provider block inside it.

edited May 5, 2021 at 13:10

Henridv

1,09414 silver badges27 bronze badges

answered Oct 15, 2019 at 22:13

Martin Atkins

76.9k9 gold badges153 silver badges169 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

mmell Over a year ago

The terraform mv command is now terraform state mv. See terraform.io/docs/commands/state/mv.html

Lokesh Over a year ago

-target flag was all what I needed. You saved me.

apottere Over a year ago

What if we want to preserve the resource as-is, and instead just use a different provider? I haven't found a solution for this other than manually editing the state file.

Eduardo Rodrigues Over a year ago

Doesn't the state record the details about the provider, so it would/could be able to use it to delete the resource?

Piyush Sonigra · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-09 14:00:57Z

8

You can comment out resources temporary in the module which you want to destroy, uncomment resources on recreation and you can follow the below steps to avoid the error.

Remove the provider from the module and Pass provider in the module explicitly,

module "pass_provider" {
  source = "../module"
   providers = {
    aws = aws
  }
}

Pass provider with alias,

module "pass_provider_alias" {
  source = "../module"

   providers = {
    aws = "aws.alias_name"
  }
}

edited Feb 9, 2020 at 14:00

answered Feb 9, 2020 at 13:50

Piyush Sonigra

1,68814 silver badges12 bronze badges

Comments

Noam Manos · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-01 21:51:48Z

7

I started to get this Provider configuration not present error after upgrading Terraform v0.12 to v0.13.

Following explicit-provider-source-locations to align with Terraform v0.13 should probably be the right way, but for the meantime, downgrading to v0.12 has resolved it.

answered Oct 1, 2020 at 21:51

Noam Manos

17.4k4 gold badges99 silver badges92 bronze badges

Comments

Carlos Gomez · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-02 02:23:12Z

5

The first thing to check, if you are working in a team, is to validate the last version of terraform used to build, if your version is other change it and test. A Example of this kind of issue: https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/26062

answered Sep 2, 2020 at 2:23

Carlos Gomez

2303 silver badges15 bronze badges

MatthewMartin Over a year ago

This should be higher ranked. This was the real reason in my case.

MatthewMartin Over a year ago

For future people: run terraform plan & apply, even if 0 things change. This will force the tf version of the state file to update & then the misleading error goes away.

demisx Over a year ago

That fixed it for me! Very misleading error. My local TF was 1.5.7 while the CI one was 1.7.4.

Eat at Joes · Accepted Answer · 2021-11-12 16:27:00Z

5

If you commented out/removed a module and you see this error then another option is terraform state rm to esentially forget about it. Terraform state rm

You definately want to destroy the resource, terraform destroy -target=module.mymodule but in some cases the resource isn't physical, for example a random within the module. Also if you are using Terraform Cloud and the workspace is VCS linked then you wont be able to run an apply or destroy locally. In these cases use rm and if there are lingering resources just delete them manually.

edited Nov 12, 2021 at 16:27

answered May 26, 2021 at 22:34

Eat at Joes

5,0271 gold badge44 silver badges43 bronze badges

Comments

Nick K9 · Accepted Answer · 2022-05-11 09:35:21Z

0

I was having this issue in a development environment while refactoring my monorepo to add multiple environments (staging, prod). I was using Terraform Cloud. I solved it by destroying everything that Terraform was tracking, doing the refactor, and then doing a new plan/apply from scratch. This won't work for most situations, but it was by far the easiest solution for me since there were 100+ resources that had moved.

answered May 11, 2022 at 9:35

Nick K9

4,8271 gold badge40 silver badges83 bronze badges

Comments

zelibobla · Accepted Answer · 2024-02-21 16:53:10Z

0

Another solution that worked for me is just removing orphan resources from the .tfstate file manually.

terraform init -> terraform plan -out=my.plan -> terraform apply my.plan worked well after that

answered Feb 21, 2024 at 16:53

zelibobla

1,5111 gold badge16 silver badges23 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Refactoring modules: Error: Provider configuration not present

7 Answers 7

Comments

Comments

Comments

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

7 Answers 7

4 Comments

Comments

Comments

3 Comments

Comments

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related